Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies shine in the gentle but effective You Hurt My Feelings
“You know nice is not a nice word”
Released in 2023, Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings reunites the writer and director with Julia Louis-Dreyfus after their collaboration on Enough Said, a similarly low-key comedy-drama. And even with a starry cast including Tobias Menzies, Succession’s Arian Moayed and Michaela Watkins, the overall vibe here is unassuming quality.
Louis-Dreyfus plays Beth, a writer with a successful memoir under her belt who has written her first novel. She’s happily married to the rumpled Don (Menzies), a therapist becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his work, but when she gets major notes from her agent on her book, she’s not prepared for his reaction when she gives him a copy to read for himself.
He’s relatively positive about it to her face but confesses to his brother-in-law Mark that he doesn’t like it and doesn’t know how to tell her – unbeknownst to them, Beth is behind them and overhears everything. Her faith in her marriage rocked, she begins to question all she knows, ruffling the lives of both Don and her young adult son Elliot as she eventually confronts some uncomfortable truths about herself.
As I said, it is all rather low-key and so passes by gently, rather than truly rumpling the cosiness upper-middle-classness of this world. That’s not to deny the truthfulness of the script, particularly where it examines how we use white lies so often with those closest to us and Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies are highly watchable throughout, as are Watkins and Moayed as her sister and brother-in-law.
